In a couple of the statewide ballot races, Californians served a sharp rebuke to Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its outspoken president, Michael Weinstein. His two pet initiatives, which AHF helped put on the ballot, went down in flames. Proposition 60, Adult Film Condom Requirements, lost 45.7 to 54.3 percent, and Proposition 61, State Prescription Drug Purchase Standards, was defeated 46 percent to 54 percent, according to unofficial returns posted on the secretary of state's website.
Weinstein, a gay man, has often been accused of being a bully for not adopting new medical advances and imposing his opposition to PrEP on gay men. For years Weinstein's agency was skewing Truvada drug trial results in ads appearing in gay media outlets (including the Bay Area Reporter ) in an effort to dissuade people from taking the HIV prevention pill, which has shown extraordinary success, both in research studies and the real world. For Weinstein, only condom use is effective HIV prevention. And while condoms are very effective, new scientific advances like PrEP offer alternatives, especially for people at risk of HIV transmission. Ironically, AHF, one of the largest AIDS service providers in the world, officially will fill PrEP prescriptions at its pharmacies.
Weinstein's initiatives were attempts to legislate state worker safety and health policy from the ballot box. That's never a good idea. Prop 60, on which AHF spent $6.4 million, was a draconian measure. Under Prop 60, adult film producers could have been sued by anybody �" viewers of the adult movies, stalkers, crazed fans �" for not using a condom. And while adult performers were supposedly exempt, many of them still would have been at risk because they are often also producers. As we said in our editorial against Prop 60, government should not be telling people what to do with their bodies.
Prop 61 was no better. According to Ballotpedia, AHF spent $18 million in a losing effort that may or may not have reduced drug prices. But Weinstein's agency wasn't taking any chances �" even though it would have been exempt from the proposition's effects. So it spent millions of dollars on a ballot measure it claimed would lower drug prices but that itself would not have to follow.
San Francisco's LGBT community has long been wary of AHF and Weinstein. The agency opened its Out of the Closet thrift stores over a decade ago in direct competition with Community Thrift, a longtime local nonprofit that raises funds for HIV/AIDS agencies. But Weinstein's stance on PrEP, coming at a time when public health officials and HIV/AIDS leaders were working to promote this new prevention tool, further alienated local gay men.
According to LA Weekly, AHF was involved on the local level in two Los Angeles-area measures on the November ballot. "AHF also has given $10,000 to the campaign against Measure M, which would increase sales tax by half a cent to pay for the construction of more public transit. ...," the LA Weekly reported. "And AHF sent out campaign fliers urging voters to vote no on Los Angeles city Proposition JJJ (which allows developers to build denser projects in exchange for building affordable housing and paying higher wages) and to vote yes on Proposition HHH, which raises property taxes to build permanent supportive housing for the homeless."
Prop JJJ, which passed with 64 percent of the vote, sounds similar to housing projects proposed by San Francisco officials, yet AHF is opposed to those ideas.
State Senate candidate Jane Kim, who finished first in the June primary, was in a good position to win the general election race, according to most observers, but got caught up in the AHF wars. AHF sent out campaign hit pieces aimed at her opponent, gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, and that appears to have turned a lot of voters against her, whether it was intended or not. A group photograph that included her and Weinstein also made the rounds, further cementing the idea that the two were working together. While the AHF mailers were sent independently of the Kim campaign, it appears that voters made the connection between them.
And AHF isn't done injecting itself �" and its money �" into politics. It is pushing a drug pricing proposal like Prop 61 for Ohio next year, according to Ballotpedia. And, the LA Weekly reported, "AHF has spent an additional $1 million on its own local initiative, set for the March 2017 ballot. The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative seeks to drastically curb large-scale development in L.A. by placing limits on zoning variances and General Plan amendments that the city council can give out."
Weinstein intends on being a political player, using a nonprofit agency to spend millions of dollars on initiative races. Those funds could be providing direct services to people living with HIV/AIDS, which is what AHF purports to do. San Francisco LGBT voters are keenly aware of Weinstein's dabbling in politics, and clearly reject it. AHF should heed the lessons of this election and not stray from its mission to help PWAs.